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Updated: June 15, 2025
"How would it be if you took equal shares with me on the claims, your shares to be paid from the earnings? That would be fair all round. You would get nothing unless the title was good. I would risk no more than you did," he suggested. "Isn't I tellin' yo' I don't appear a tall in this yere transaction?" objected Mizzou. The stranger laughed a little. "I can see through a millstone," he said.
His face, however, was keen and alert and brown, all of which characteristics indicated an active Western life at no very remote day. The words which had so powerfully arrested Bennington de Laney's attention were delivered by Old Mizzou to this stranger. "Thar!" the old man had said, "ain't that Crazy Hoss Lode 'bout as good-lookin' a lead as they make 'em?"
After a time Arthur and his wife came in and they had a dreary game of "cinch," the man speaking but little, the woman not at all. Old Mizzou smoked incessantly on a corncob pipe charged with a peculiarly pungent variety of tobacco, which filled the air with a blue vapour, and penetrated unpleasantly into Bennington's mucous membranes. The next morning it was still raining.
Then, too, she was a most capable housekeeper she cooked, marketed, swept, dusted, and tyrannized over the mere men in a manner to be envied even by a New England dame. Fay and the Leslies had also taken up their quarters in the camp. Old Mizzou and the Arthurs had gone.
Old Mizzou disappeared in the direction of the corral, where he was joined presently by the man Arthur. On his way to keep the appointment of the afternoon, Bennington de Laney discovered within himself a new psychological experience. He found that, since the evening before, he had been observing things about him for the purpose of detailing them to his new friend.
Well, it looked as though the two of them were to have a pretty easy time of it, didn't it? Old Mizzou tried, by adroit questioning, to find out just why de Laney had been sent West. There was, in reality, not enough to keep one man busy, and surely Old Mizzou considered himself quite competent to attend to that. Finally, he concluded that it must be to watch him Old Mizzou.
The patriarch became impatient. "Yore play, sonny," he suggested. "I don't believe you know the one I mean," returned Bennington slowly. "She's a girl with a little mouth and a nose that is tipped up just a trifle " "Snub!" interrupted Old Mizzou, with some impatience. "Yas, I knows. Same critter. Only one like her in th' Hills.
She nodded ready comprehension, and they settled themselves to hear the following conversation: "I saw the assay," replied the stranger's voice to Mizzou's last statement, "but who's this McPherson? How do I know the assays are all right?" "Why, he's that thar professer at th' School of Mines," expostulated Mizzou. "Oh, yes!" cried the stranger, as though suddenly enlightened.
If you don't play squar', I knows how t' make ye." "Spin your yarn," repeated the stranger quietly. "I'll agree to give you and Davidson a third interest, provided I take hold of the thing at all." "An' Jack Slayton," put in Mizzou threateningly, "if you don't play us squar', I swar I'll shoot ye like a dog!"
The twilight caught them before their work was done. Bennington found himself too weary to attempt an unknown, débris-covered road by dark. He played cribbage with Old Mizzou and won. About half past nine he pushed back his chair and went outside. The stars had come out by the thousand, and a solitary cricket, which had in some way escaped the deluge, was chirping in the middle distance.
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